Author: Padraic Ryan

Ahead of a referendum on abortion rights in Ireland on May 25, Facebook released a feature that it said would allow users to see ads a given page was running. The aim was to bring “greater transparency” around political ads, a spokesman for the company said. Storyful’s Padraic Ryan and Ciaran O’Connor assessed its efficacy. The ability to views ads was announced by Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president for global policy, at a hearing in the Irish parliament Read more…

A Facebook page that erroneously and misleadingly posts old videos using Facebook’s Live function was one of a number of sources on January 25 to post old footage of a plane on fire, leading to a multitude of incorrect posts on that platform, and on others such as Twitter and YouTube. The footage posted related to an incident which took place on October 28, 2016, when an American Airlines plane caught fire at O’Hara International Airport in Chicago. Read more…

An analysis of the body language of Eric Paddock and claims of a “second shooter” by a verified Facebook page with hundreds of thousands of followers were just two of several conspiracy theories to go viral in the wake of the Mandalay Bay shooting. Eric Paddock spoke to the media on October 2 about his brother. A woman called Mandy Bombard, who runs Bombard’s Body Language, posted what purported to be an analysis of Eric Paddock’s body language. Read more…

Harrowing images of women, children, and animals, all portrayed as the victims of domestic violence, were used as part of a campaign that hatched on 4chan’s infamous /Pol/ board before spreading to a number of other platforms, writes Storyful’s Padraic Ryan. “Not bad,” read the first reply on a 4chan thread started on August 23. “I see potential,” wrote another. The two were responding to the thread’s original poster, who had started a discussion entitled “Lets take it Read more…